Feedback for New Event Idea?

[cmj7gh]

I’ve been kicking around an idea for a bike race in my head for a while. I’ve discussed it with a few friends and they all thought it was good enough to share, so now I’m looking to y’all for any feedback. If enough people are game, I’d love to give it a try some time this summer!

The motivation is to have something similar in format to an alleycat that is more safe/accessible and that takes almost no planning.

The rules would be pretty simple:
* Old paperback books are pre-placed at locations throughout Arlington

* Riders are responsible for planning their own route to find as many books as possible in a certain amount of time.

* Each participant has a race number. When they get to a book, they tear out and keep the page corresponding to their race number

* (Note, this system isn’t my idea. I stole it from a documentary that I watched about the Barcley Marathons)

* Everyone gathers at some final location at a set time, and whoever has the most pages wins.

And a few clarifications that would keep it safe and easy to plan:
* Everyone who wants to participate is responsible for placing one book the morning of the event, and then retrieving their book after the event.

* I like this because nobody is responsible for any special planning and nobody gets the advantage of being able to plan their route ahead of time.
* If the group is too small, we may need more than one book/person. If that’s the case, the locations for the extra books would be announced ahead of time.

* The race starts at some central location, and everyone reports where they placed their book. I imagine having a giant map that everyone can mark, and then each participant can take pictures of/study the map.
* The books would have to be in Arlington and within a block of an official off-street bike trail or a street that Google says is bike friendly. They wouldn’t be hidden – probably placed by a bike rack

* I imagine there’s the chance that a book might grow legs and walk off at some point in the day. We’d need some sort of GroupMe text message system so that we could alert eachother if a book goes missing.

* You have to show up at the designated meeting point on time, or your score doesn’t count.
* If we’re feeling competitive, we could have a buy-in. Everyone pays $1 to enter, and whoever wins gets the money

* If we did this, we’d have to have extra aggressive messaging about safety – it’s up to each person to plan a safe route and ride safely and not put yourself or anyone else in danger!

Anyone have any comments on the idea or any of the specific rules? If folks are interested in trying it, we’d just need to pick a date and advertise it. I imagine we could start at some central, neutral location(Gravelly Point Park?) on a Saturday around Noon, and then meet back at that same location 3 hours later.

Topic

[Sunyata]

@bobco85 160201 wrote:

Just had this idea pop into my head (warning: you are about to see a brief glimpse into my thoughts): looking at your original request of using books got me thinking, if each person has a distinct page #, then each person is going to end up with a nonsensical “story” based on those pages. This gets me thinking, it’s not about the books themselves, how about the writing?

What if, instead of a page # from a book, each location would have a bunch of random words/phrases (maybe on cards?), and the order would be designated by the location (each location gets a number that denotes the position of that word/phrase in a story). Each participant would grab one part at random from each location, and at the end of the ride, everyone would tell the story based on the parts they found.

It’d be like a mashup of Mad Lib with the words/phrases coming from something like Cards Against Humanity (see Steve O’s cycling version for added hilarity).

Quick example:
Story: (rider name) set out on a bike ride. First, they put on (#1 clothes) and ate (#2 food). Partway through their ride, they encountered (#3 group) which made them feel (#4 adjective). Finally, (rider name) made it to the bar and drank (#5 beverage) until they (#6 action). The end.

Picking up cards at random from each location, Judd ends up with this story:
Judd set out on a bike ride. First, they put on coveralls-that-don’t-cover-all and ate raspberries stolen from the MVT by Steve O. Partway through their ride, they encountered a pack of pathletes which made them feel sticky. Finally, Judd made it to the bar and drank nectar of the cycling gods until they forgot how to clip out of their pedals. The end.

I LOVE this idea! (The thought of tearing pages out of books makes me very sad.) Plus, how fun will it be to convene at the ending brewery and have each person/team read their NSFW mad libs?!

Or… We could play with an actual Cards Against Humanity deck. Each person/team is given a black card and then each check point will have random white cards. The person/team with the best combo wins? (OMG, I am so going to do this on a MTB ride.)

[Judd]

Perhaps Steve O will lend some “Velocipedes Against Humanity Cards.”

Q: How did this get sticky?
A: Bobco’s videos on Youtube.

[dasgeh]

Have you heard of Hash House Harriers?

Those runs are somewhat similar — meet in one location, run, end at bar. For the “normal” runs, they don’t bother coordinating with the bar, but they pick bars that aren’t super busy. For special runs where they expect lots of people, they coordinate. Or when they want drink specials, they coordinate.

New District would be great, but isn’t the most central. The Westover Beer Garden is also bike-friendly, but also not central.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@dasgeh 160282 wrote:

Have you heard of Hash House Harriers?

Those runs are somewhat similar — meet in one location, run, end at bar. For the “normal” runs, they don’t bother coordinating with the bar, but they pick bars that aren’t super busy. For special runs where they expect lots of people, they coordinate. Or when they want drink specials, they coordinate.

New District would be great, but isn’t the most central. The Westover Beer Garden is also bike-friendly, but also not central.

I’ve been told that hashers are responsible for the periodic lumps of blue powder that appear on sidewalks and trails…my wife explained the reasoning of this to me at some point (I guess she’s done these events before) but I’ve forgotten and am too lazy to look it up.

[dasgeh]

@TwoWheelsDC 160283 wrote:

I’ve been told that hashers are responsible for the periodic lumps of blue powder that appear on sidewalks and trails…my wife explained the reasoning of this to me at some point (I guess she’s done these events before) but I’ve forgotten and am too lazy to look it up.

Yes, lumps of powder and certain chalk markings are how hashers mark the route (they don’t know the route ahead of time, just start and end). (full disclosure: I hashed way more in NYC than here)

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

[bobco85]

@Judd 160245 wrote:

Perhaps Steve O will lend some “Velocipedes Against Humanity Cards.”

Q: How did this get sticky?
A: Bobco’s videos on Youtube.

I still shudder a bit when I read that.

[Sunyata]

@dasgeh 160282 wrote:

Have you heard of Hash House Harriers?

Those runs are somewhat similar — meet in one location, run, end at bar. For the “normal” runs, they don’t bother coordinating with the bar, but they pick bars that aren’t super busy. For special runs where they expect lots of people, they coordinate. Or when they want drink specials, they coordinate.

New District would be great, but isn’t the most central. The Westover Beer Garden is also bike-friendly, but also not central.

There may or may not be a group that I belong to that does MTB hash rides…
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